Gilgit Baltistan Assembly Elections 2026: Bijli First, Bakwas Later
By Hashim Shah
Let me be very clear, I don’t give a damn about sending another Mehdi Shah, Amjad Adv, or Hafeez Sahib to Islamabad to give eloquent speeches about our constitutional rights while I sit in Skardu without electricity for 20 hours a day.
I don’t care about provincial status if my phone is dead, my water pump won’t work, the road from Gilgit to Skardu is half-broken again, the so-called tourism powerhouse is out of power every other day, and the internet disappears without even getting the SCOM 4G signal right once. I don’t care about abstract legal debates when I can’t even Google what these self-proclaimed “activists” or politicians are posting on their Facebook TLs because the signal is gone. Again.
And you know who’s most responsible for this massive disconnect between what people in Gilgit-Baltistan actually need and what dominates political discussions?
Our own so-called progressive intellectuals and activists. Be it the religio-political bros, the left-leaning “activists,” or myopic nationalist “haqparasts.” The ones who are supposed to be on our side.
For years, we’ve seen the “candle protests” on a daily basis at Yadgar Skardu or Aliabad, Hunza.
We shared the posts. We nodded along when GB’s left-leaning intelligentsia talked about constitutional limbo, decolonization, systemic exclusion, and not having an autonomous “Kashmir-like setup.” People genuinely believed these people understood what GB needed.
Then I spent my twentieth hour without electricity, watched my internet die for the fiftieth time in a day, struggled to get clean water, or water at all, in Skardu or Hunza, and realized something uncomfortable: our progressive elite has completely lost the plot.
They’re fluent in all the right vocabulary; autonomy, resistance, intersectionality, history dates, world systems, the bourgeoisie and proletariat class layers. They write long Facebook essays and Twitter threads. They quote Marx, Trotsky, Che, Khomeini, or Lenin. They organize “all-parties conferences” or hours-long redundant debates in Gilgit, Skardu, or Quetta hotels over chai about historical injustices and why GB is “part of the Kashmir issue,” and so on.
And while they do all this, the neighbor’s shop in Danyor or Agha Hadi Chowk still can’t stay open because there’s no electricity.
A family in Ghizer still relies on unsafe water.
A patient from Diamer still has to travel hours to reach a basic dispensary.
Hunza, the so-called “model district,” still runs on unreliable power, no city planning, climate vulnerability, and fragile internet.
BUT
The script we’ve all memorized by now is:
GB doesn’t have provincial status, therefore GB has no electricity.
GB doesn’t have constitutional rights, therefore GB has no clean water.
Everything, literally everything, gets reduced to the redundant constitutional limbo.
This is lazy thinking disguised as radical analysis.
Yes, GB’s constitutional status matters. We deserve representation and rights. But our activists have turned this into the only issue worth discussing. And here’s the part they refuse to admit:
Even if GB became a full province tomorrow, it would not magically fix the transformer in your mohalla, water won’t come from heaven via Sadpara Dam, repair the road, or even metal it for that matter, or stabilize the power supply in Skardu.
KP has load shedding.
Balochistan has collapsing infrastructure.
Sindh has water crises.
Kashmir has no reliable internet despite having an “autonomous” system.
Provincial status does not come with a magic wand that generates megawatts.
But acknowledging this would require our intelligentsia to deal with boring, unsexy realities like energy policy, micro-hydel maintenance, budget priorities, corruption in local departments, and basic governance. Much easier to chant slogans, hold a protest, and blame everything on some “invisible enemy.”
So yes, I’ll say something controversial:
I don’t care about provincial status right now. There, I said it.
We are living in the age of AI, automation, remote work, and digital economies. Cities are building futures around stable internet, reliable power, and human capital.
And what does GB have?
Unstable electricity.
Internet that collapses in the rain.
Students in Skardu and Gilgit unable to attend online classes.
Freelancers in Hunza losing clients because the connection drops mid-call.
While the world debates artificial intelligence, we’re still debating whether the lights will stay on tonight.
This isn’t just inconvenience. This is structural exclusion from the future.
These aren’t abstract injustices. These are daily humiliations.
But roads, hospitals, electricity grids—these don’t sound revolutionary enough. They don’t make for viral posts. You can’t sound radical while discussing transformers and water pumps. So our activists ignore them.
They spend more time policing other activists than solving actual problems.
GB’s progressive spaces are now dominated by purity tests. Are you anti-imperialist enough? Are you sufficiently radical? Did you say the right words?
As if people in Gilgit, Hunza, Skardu, or Diamer can afford ideological purity while sitting in darkness.
Bijli first. Bakwas later.
I’m not against rights. I’m not against history. I’m not against constitutional debates.
But I’m exhausted by politics that can’t keep my phone charged or my water running.
If GB’s progressive elite actually wants credibility, they need to start with the basics: electricity, internet, roads, healthcare. Not as afterthoughts. As priorities.
Until then, spare me the slogans.
So, my Gilgit-Baltistan, in the 24 January elections, elect those comparatively competent candidates who at least include fixing basic human necessities in their election manifestos, rather than just chanting “Province.”
Give me bijli first.
We can do the bakwas later.
Twitter (X): @hashimshahsyed
